By Adenike Lawal<\/p>\n
The fraud trial of Abubakar Sambo, former Director of Finance and Accounts at the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), was on Tuesday stalled at the Federal High Court in Abuja due to his worsening hearing condition.<\/p>\n
Mr. Sambo, who is facing charges of diverting over \u20a61.84 billion in public funds, was unable to proceed after his counsel, Ishaka Dikko (SAN), informed the court that the defendant could barely hear and required written communication.<\/p>\n
Although the defense did not present a medical certificate, Dikko explained that he had only recently become fully aware of the severity of Sambo\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n
The prosecution, represented by ICPC lawyer Osuobeni Akponimisingha, was ready to call a witness but did not object to the adjournment.<\/p>\n
Justice Musa Liman adjourned the matter to November 6, 2025.<\/p>\n
Sambo was first arraigned on January 28, 2025, on a three-count charge of unlawfully authorizing payments via the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), for project supervision without proper approval.<\/p>\n
The payments were allegedly made to six individuals: Henrrientta Onomen Okojie, Asuni Adejoke Aminat, Usman Kwakwa, Laure Shehu Abdullahi, Emmanuel Pada Titus, and Musa Umar Karaye.<\/p>\n
The ICPC alleges that the actions violated several federal laws, including the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act (2000), the Public Enterprises Regulatory Commission Act (2004), and the Cybercrimes Act (2015).<\/p>\n
Sambo has pleaded not guilty and remains on \u20a6200 million bail granted earlier by Justice Bolaji Olajuwon.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, four individuals linked to the disbursements; Karaye, Titus, Okojie, and Kwakwa are facing separate corruption charges before Justice Emeka Nwite and are currently out on \u20a650 million bail each.<\/p>\n
The case remains one of the most prominent corruption trials involving the REA, spotlighting issues of accountability and oversight in government financial systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Adenike Lawal The fraud trial of Abubakar Sambo, former Director of Finance and Accounts at the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), was on Tuesday stalled at the Federal High Court in Abuja due to his worsening hearing condition. Mr. Sambo, who is facing charges of diverting over \u20a61.84 billion in public funds, was unable to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":69492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69493,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69491\/revisions\/69493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}